First Carvel in Beijing
āItās a little hole in the wall,ā Luce says, humble-bragging, ābut they make the best dan dan noodles in Beijing.ā
I just nod. Luce is trying to be sweet. She is trying to impress me. Itās been nine years, but I can tell she still has a crush on me. I find that Iām flattered.
But what really catches my eye is the familiar sign for ice cream cakes on a new building facade. āCarvel!ā I cry. āI havenāt been to one since I was a kid.ā
I canāt believe it. A full store. Fancy too. Awning, plate glass windows, neon sign.
I havenāt tasted a Carvel cake since my brotherās eighth birthday.
Luceās voice is too loud inside the Jeep. āDo you want to stop? Itās the first Carvel in Beijing.ā
We stop. Luce pulls into an alley lined with cars haphazardly parked alongside the bricks of the hutong walls. She finds a spot and eases her Jeep into place as a few bicyclists whiz past angrily ringing their tinny bells.
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Mooch big man now Mooch honk lines to match
had a breakdown and i cum back and there are all these new celebrities Iām meant to know who the fuck they are and theres this one called like scaramooch and he does the job that guy who looked like the woman who shits in the sink in bridesmaids is called and the rumours are that he does loads of drugs like probably prescription stuff but definitely some kind of stimulant and when he speaks he copies the hand gestures and vocal patterns of like president fart who i honestly like thought wasnāt really american president and id just like hallucinated it while i was having this like complete mental collapse but it is real he is king of america and then this new guy is the guy who speaks to newspapers and stuff for him only he doesnāt like speaking to newspapers because he doesnāt like them and he doesnāt like his colleagues and he keeps shouting at them and calling them fucking cretins or something i donāt remember the exact words because AS I SAID Iāve had a breakdown and now all the celebrities are different and this one is funny because heās a white male dick in a position of power lololololol but whatās funny is that heās called the mooch and heās into uppers and he takes them before he screams at his like employees and at the press and its bad because people should speak to the press and trust that the politicians and the press are doing good things and working together bye bye have no more time
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Teh Mooch Friday Fiction: Spicey
Sean was already pissed. Heād only left the White House a 3 months ā and he was being āescortedā to the Press office by an armed guard, wearing a āVisitorā pass, like he was on a goddamn tour or something
The officer, Trent, if he remembered his name right, lead him to his old office, a trip he didnāt need an escort for, and could have taken with his eyes closed.
āRight in here, sirā
āThanks, Trent ā is Anthony in there?ā
āTroy, sir, and heāll be here in just a momentā.
Shit ā he knew it started with TRā¦. fuck it, he doesnāt work here anymore.
He let himself in, and was relieved the administration trusted him to sit in his old office alone without a guard, while he waited for āThe Moochā to be late to the meeting he had set up.
He looked around at the office. Of course, like the eternal 22 year old college football star he was to remain, The Mooch had placed bullshit inspirational posters up ā āA journey of a mile begins with a single stepāā¦. Jesus.
He was mid-eyeroll when there was a single knock on the door and the Mooch walked into the office.
If Spicer hadnāt turned around right away, he would have known it was the Mooch by his cheap smelling Aqua Di Gio, which Spicer would (rightfully guess), he had worn every day for the last 15 years or so.
āSean! Have a seat!ā
Sean sat down at the desk, facing his old seat.
Good God, stuffed in an office with him, he decided Mooch spritzed about 2 sprays too many of his cologne every morning. Or refreshed it too much during the day. It was borderline nauseating.
The Mooch sat down.
āI hope you donāt mind I changed up the office, Iām not one for the stuff the National Archive lets us borrow ā I like the stuff we had up at my Wall Street office ā keeps me -ā
āCan we cut the bullshit? I donāt care what you did to the office, itās not mine anymore.ā
Anthony took a breath, both hands on the desk.
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Teh Mooch Friday Fiction: Take it Like an American
Sean Spicer stood in his office. Or, rather, his former office. It was small and dark and heād always hated it. But now, as all of his decisions from the past few days rattled around in his brain, he loved it more than anywhere in the world. More than his boyhood bedroom, more than the confessional at his church where heād once snuck a nap as a kid. Heād confessed and atoned for that, of course. He was a good Catholic boy. He couldnāt think too much about God today.
A shadow appeared on his desk. He heard a sigh and matched it, assuming it was Priebus, coming to rebuke him. It was just his way of saying thank you. There was so much unspoken between themā¦. maybe once the dust had settledā¦.
Of course, what Sean didnāt know was how soon Reince would be showing up on his doorstep with a bottle of whiskey, unemployment forms, and a wry smile.
Spicer turned around and started. It was Scaramucci. The Mooch. Goddamnit. GodDAMNit.
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Jeremy Fernando presents: āGrievanceā by One White Raven
In my deepest memory from 1989, protestors created a statue of liberty from paper. They marched but idealism cannot stand against guns. Their loss is still ours. For the world has since known that might is right.
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MISFIT DOC: Self-Questionnaire
Please answer the following questions with as little forethought and as much plain truth as you can muster. Be quick and be bold! There are no wrong answers, only tedious detours on the road to self-awareness.
For what celebrity, performing artist, dance show contestant, or professional athlete are you most frequently mistaken?
Do you allow family members to define you, and complete strangers to criticize your core beliefs, or do you shrug and go your merry way?
Ignoring for the moment issues related to stretch fabric and muscle mass, what is your secret superpower?
What historical figureācoloratura soprano, pro-bono defense lawyer, reclusive spinster poet, eccentric scientist, tragic queen, or victorious generalāis your go-to guy?
Where do you find inspirationāthe play of dappled sun and shade, a mighty oak, clouds like sheep that ramble across the sky, a green tendril, the sound of waves that crash on the beach, the written word, or the toothless smile of a newborn baby?
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MISFIT DOC: Definitions of Endearment
Babe ā /bÄb/
1.) A description.
a.) Look at that babe, sheās out of my league.
2.) Term of endearment. Personally preferred over the childlike ābabyā
a.) Hey babe, I missed you.
b.) Can you please make me some coffee, babe?
Ball and chain ā /ĖbĆ“l (É)n ĖCHÄn/
1.) Playfully derogatory name for the wife. Occasionally used in jest, usually when under the influence, never intentionally in her presence.
a.) Best I call it a night and head home to the olā ball and chain.
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MISFIT DOC: Noose
The rough hemp noose gives another inch. Your bruised trachea crackles. Smells old and strong. Dipped and cured in some furious nutritive. You know the taste. The local intoxicant of kerosene and turpentine. It grows wild on the outskirts. Not even. The fraction of. The numbest hollow of breath. The muscles in your lungs tighten at instinct. Force them apart. Leave a gap and tighten. Your handler whoever they are tonight or today. You canāt tell how many days or hours has past. Hesitates with a private knowledge. The low necrotic murmur of his laugh. Private enough for you. Tightens in your bowels. You know this knowledge of the grasp, the subtle trust of the fingers. The flicker of gloved fingertips that stay to long across the skin that says they know. The flexible skin along the back of your throat hungered pulled and buckled. But buckles the rope to the strangle collar. Its weight makes you buckle your knees. Donāt buckle them. Pull your back straight. But the luscious breath like dark lurid wine. The pressure like wet rust, like a gentle tourniquet. The sigh trapped deep in the throat cannot rise. You couldnāt force it out.Ā
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MISFIT DOC: The Circle
The crocodile isnāt very adept at hunting, but when deer flock in fear, forever ignoring that lonely spot, outside, that could have saved them, what will save them?
Once upon a time it did not occur to the Aristotles, the cherries on top of all the intelligentsia, of the horrors of slavery. On the contrary it was deemed to be a necessity. They read more books than me. Wrote more books than me. Thought way more than me. But am I to judge?
Buddha, twenty five years after āenlightenmentā could only reluctantly allow a woman within his Sangha.
The earth used to be flat. The world fashioned into a globe at the expense of a dead body upon which stands the church of science.
Once upon a time we fed warriors to lions dragged out of jungles. For Royal entertainment.
What and who has made us less sadistic? Not more books surely. Not the intelligentsia surely. Who are the deer amongst us that drive us towards the spot no crocodile or tiger can reach? Who are these saviors? How do they see what a hundred years of contemplation by a dozen geniuses have missed?
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Selflesslie Sunday #11: Superfood, Wellness, Fresh
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MEME CORNER (v)
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Interview: Gregory Betts
How did you start out as a writer? How has your craft or method of writing changed since then?
I began writing poems in earnest when I was a teenager, inspired by Neil Youngās song Thrasher. The song paralyzed me with its combination of direct earnestness and abstract imagery. I wrote the lyrics out by hand and taped them to my bedroom wall. Then I typed them out and taped those to the wall. My own writing followed shortly afterwards, unleashed by the possibility of writing I gained from Thrasher. I began studying the lyrics of other songs by Bob Dylan, Robert Hunter, and David Bowie. Ā By the time I discovered Alan Ginsberg and George Bowering, I was already reading with an eye on technique and affect, and thinking about how I was writing and could do more. All of those early poems were not for anybody but myself. My writing style shifted dramatically when I realized, many years later, that poetry can also have an audience.
What was the planning process like for a poem like āThe Obvious Flapā? Was there a clear beginning and a clear place you wanted to go?
āThe Obvious Flapā began with a series of experiments that Gary Barwin and I passed back and forth to each other. We kept editing one piece in particular, adding more and more lines until those broke off into new poems. It evolved very quickly and organically. There was no plan until we had a full manuscript was complete and then we went back and edited. The beginning of the book was the idea that language was weird and wonderful.
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MISFIT DOC: Postage
One day I remember walking down to Seatonās, the corner drugstore, to pay the utility bills, slow summer day, rather long letter to post, the air out salubrious somehow I canāt now seem to explain, yet a lugubrious senescence settles over me as on my walk I feel myself aging.
I waited at Seatonās small post office window for the clerk Amelia to weigh and post my letter, and I also purchase a half page of stamps. āDrugstore Cowboy commemorative page,ā Amelia smiles.
I then browsed the aisles for knickknack knockoffs, picked up a last-second gift card, and waited to watch a strawberry malt whipped up for a little girl, the pink stuff spilled from hand held lade ladles handled delicately ā Ameliaās vessels of oak and wool woven sails as she spun the concoction. Here again I feel a portage of age from one bondage portal to my next epochal position.
In other words, I felt upside down, the company store closed, and caught up in Gas, Oil, Electric, Water, and Phone Bills, living in an age of fossil-fuel habits, in a diseased society. Ridden in and on, no cure here, piece of the old neighborhood, now dead letter drugstore while drone dreary mosquitoes fill the air with gewgaw.
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Selflesslie Sunday #14: Sheep
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FAT & QUEER ā MISFIT
Misfit
I am fat. If I say this about myself, friends or co-workers are quick to say some variation of, āno no, youāre not fat.ā For a long time I would say nothing in response. I knew they thought they were being kind or helpful. I wanted to tell them that I wanted to be fat. I didnāt see it as an insult or a negative to be called fat. What I really wanted to tell them was that I am not fat on accident. I am not longing for a thin body. I want to be fat. I am fat on purpose. In fact, I want to be fatter.
Transformation. The concept fascinated me from an early age. At nine years old, it took the form of wanting to be a vampire. I had this recurring dream that there would be a knock on the front door late at night that only I would hear. The rest of my family would sleep through it, unaware of what was transpiring not that far from them. Iād go downstairs, open the inner door, and see a vampire standing there. The orange glow of the light tucked into the overhang over the house splayed shadows across his pale face. It was always a male vampire in my dream, usually around my age or just a few years older that had come for me.
The screen door kept us apart. I knew enough vampire lore that I knew he couldnāt cross the threshold of the house without an invitation. For once, my house was a safe space. Ā I would have to invite him in or go outside for him to do me any harm. I worried about him hurting me, even though in every dream, I knew without any word from him that he wanted me to go with him. He wanted me to be like him. Part of me wanted the same thing. Another part of me was terrified. I had no idea what being a vampire would actually be like. I was, perhaps, too practical a child, even in my dreams. It also scared me that I wanted to be a vampire.
The desire for vampiric transformation would eventually fade away, but not the desire for transformation. I donāt remember what age my desire to be fat kicked in. Maybe it was before the vampire, maybe after, maybe they nested inside each other in some way. I knew that I could never tell anyone about it. I knew that my family, especially would think it was odd, gross. I was a chubby kid in a family of people geared towards thinness and sports. The pressure to be like them was constant. My fatherās solution to my fatness was to sign me up for any sport I showed even the most minuscule amount of interest in. My motherās tactic was to put me on diet after diet, ones where I had to limit my calorie intake to 1500 calories and could have a few slices of cheese with crackers. There was no space for me to say that I liked being fat. Although I didnāt even have the vocabulary to express that I liked it. I wasnāt supposed to. I internalized it as something wrong with me. So I would go to the soccer practices, eat my few slices of cheese, and wait for a moment when I could eat from the jar of peanut butter that I hid in a shoebox under my bed.
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Paradise City
I wish Iād never been born. No, thatās not quite true. I wish heād never been born. The magnificent Oliver Jones with all his genius ideas. But he wasnāt a genius. They were all wrong, and if heād never existed, maybe I wouldnāt have been able to do the things Iāve done. āBuild a city,ā he said. āItāll be an English paradise.ā He was so, so wrong.
He was running out of time. Oliver had been at work in his study for hours and had come up with virtually nothing. He was supposed to be coming up with his next big entrepreneurial enterprise of 1995, an idea that would have the common people of England jumping from their chairs when they saw it announced on TV or their eyeballs bugging out of their heads when they read about it in the magazines and the papers like they had with his last project proposal. So far, all heād gotten was a thick layer of wadded up sheets of paper covering the floor of the study. Oliver removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
He wished desperately that he could just escape to some relaxing little haven where he wouldnāt have to worry about stimulating the real estate market, like a nice little villa where he could spend his days surrounded by similar people who knew exactly what kind of experience he was looking for. Oliverās eyes popped open wide. He was back in business.
Oliver could see it all in his mindās eye: A luxurious little city of quaint little villas lining each street in all manner of whimsical pastel shades, people strolling leisurely along the sidewalks or whizzing past in golf carts, maybe a few facilities for various recreational activities here and there, palm trees and a tropical cabana down at the nearby beach. No, wait. That wasnāt right. There were enough island retirement paradises already. Scratch the pastels and the Bahamian breeze; give everything a more rustic shade and bring it all closer to home. England didnāt have anything that would even come close to something like that. Until now. Oliver knew there had to be space available somewhere. He buzzed his secretary and told her to get him a list of all the vacant spaces in England. He bustled around his office, grabbing his coat and hat, and just barely managing to take the list from his secretary and thank her before he sped out the door.
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Poem: Meg Pokrass
Man Against Nature
I stand near the boiling stockpot warming my fingers while the chicken and vegetables melt, the smell making our apartment strong. Canned wind howls from the TV screen in the living room, producing a cool glow. He loves man-against-nature shows which are really just a buff-looking model talking to himself (and his hidden film crew) before lunch, which is probably catered sushi.
I serve him the fresh broth on a lockable tray, move his legs from couch to the floor, bend my knees to avoid using my back. He drinks soup with a special deep spoon ā and though his fingers tremble, they are able to grasp. I sit with him, cheek against his warm shoulder, watching the man trapped between two icy mountain ranges building a fire out of sticks.
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